Science and Religion (Craig, Plantinga vs Gale, Smith)

[Thoughtitorium]

Quentin Smith looks mad.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium "it is the case" doesn't change anything. that merely points out the condition of existence, the condition of what is. it is the case that i am male. in this case, i exist as a male. nothingness cannot have conditions, qualities, quantities, etc if you can give it these things, anything measurable, then it's not nothing (in this case, not nothing is a double negative, meaning, it must be something.)

[Thoughtitorium]

@jeromyrutter "It is the case" means that it is true. For example, it's true that before there was something, there was nothing. The nothingness had no conditions, no properties, no-thing. It was total non-being.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium yes, and this is an attempt to make nothing something. and you don't know that its true. you're guessing. it begs the question of how can you know it is/was nothing to begin with. by what means could you declare it was nothing? "no-thing" isn't nothing. if everything was 1, like the big bang posits, it wasn't a thing. things are solid. seems insane to say "an infinite nothing existed." infinite in space, eternal in time.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium nothing is not something. "nothing in particular" is not "nothingness".

premise 1: nothing exists (not a true premise) btq

premise 2: nothing exists (not a true premise) btq

conclusion: something exists. (how is proven?)

and even then

premise 1: nothing exists

premise 2: nothing exists

conclusion: nothing exists

a tautology. wow. that was interesting.

you can't even build an argument for getting something from nothing, because you can't talk about nothing.

[Thoughtitorium]

@jeromyrutter This is where speculation has to end and going out into the world and doing science begins. The universe doesn't care about logic; our logical rules are based on observation of the world.  This is why Christians fear science, because at its core Christianity is not a search for truth -- it's an old fashioned political system.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium i'm not a christian. in fact, i rather love science and not so fond of religion at all. granted, i'm no scientist either. i simply am an avid reader of both philosophy and science. whatever gave you the idea i'm a religious nut, wow are you wrong. in fact, religious people are more likely to believe in nothing than i am. why? because their creator is the magician that created all this from nothing. if it has always been here, it wasn't created.

[Thoughtitorium]

@jeromyrutter My bad. I must have forgotten who I was talking to. I've got a few conversations going on.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium in fact, i constantly rant against the idea that the US is a christian founded nation. nothing in the bible supports democracy. it's about pharoahs, kings, caesars, etc. authority figures. we aren't to use our own understanding, wisdom is a bad thing, and increasing knowledge is bad as well...all these things are essential for a democracy to even exist, let alone function well or improve.

[Thoughtitorium]

@jeromyrutter Yup. Jesus was a totalitarian. Thank goodness for the Greeks and democracy! I don't like the wave of conservative Republican Christians like Rick Santorum; I wish the Ron Paul types would be the future of the Republican party -- the socially liberal ones.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium nothing cannot do anything. it couldn't even hold something, whatever the boundaries are is what is holding something. and the thermodynamic law of energy conservation? energy cannot be created nor destroyed is inconsistent with nothingness. energy, by default, is eternal evolution. it can change form, but can't assume the form of nothing...non-existence. therefore, god is the equivalent of energy, whether conscious or not.

[Thoughtitorium]

@jeromyrutter You need to get up to speed on physics. Christians aren't much fans of leaving the armchair, are they?

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium in fact, to be honest, the only reason i presented this evenly remotely close to god was because i thought YOU were religious, and was simply trying to show you evolution....but if you look closely, you'll see i was writing god out of it. the idea is to replace their spiritual sense of "god" with the cosmic sense of awe that scientists have, that i see when i look up at the sky, knowing that no god made anything. hence, we take the place of god...in our world.

[Thoughtitorium]

@jeromyrutter I like your approach. Carl Sagan was right about promoting the wonder of the naturalistic universe. A lot, if not most, people turn to religion for meaning when naturalism provides enough of it.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium my, uh, non ad hominem, meet them on their level approach to being civil, but trying to get them to think.

[Thoughtitorium]

@jeromyrutter What do you mean with this comment? Are you saying I made a personal attack on Christians? I couldn't find which of my comments you were responding to. YouTube should make it easier to know.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium energy can do everything that nothingness can't. it's possibilities are endless. and after billions of years, it develops consciousness, in the form of life. you and i. energy is what does exist, in every form you can think of. you are part of it, made from it, and expression of it. and if god is the only thing that does exist, then it is only god compared to nothing, a self-actualizing concept. know thyself. if god is all that exists, then there is no god.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium because the forms of it are what wonder if it has a god...you and i wonder. god wonders if it has a god, ad infinitum? we're in circular reasoning. once one of us declares it insane, god becomes an atheist. why would god postulate its existence on itself having a god? why would god talk (to itself?) about theism? anything that knows needs no conversation, except to entertain itself.if you know, you cannot believe anything but a falsehood.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium because believing something true is only possible if you don't know, if you're out of knowing, if you're agnostic. so either god knows, or god believes. by making more than one of itself, it can do both. tabula rasa style. the word god, then, becomes useless. we are the universe looking back onto itself.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium what most people think of as a god is an authoritative being, rather than a state of being, that is separate from themselves. therefore, they prefer nothing exists, so they can be separate from god, instead of one with it. but rest assured: wherever you go, god is there. if you wanna see what god looks like from your own perspective, look in a mirror.

[Thoughtitorium]

@jeromyrutter Christians want absolute control over people, so they pretend an all-powerful God exists and then delude themselves into thinking they have the authority to tell other people what to do. And then there are the mindless robots who prefer to be babies forever and never want to leave their parent's lap. You're in a cult, and you know it.

[jeromyrutter]

@Thoughtitorium "nothing" is an absolute absence of anything at all. clearly, it is impossible for anything to evolve from the absence of existence. something must exist to evolve. something must exist to be changed into something else. call it an infinite quantum field if you like, but something must be there.

[Thoughtitorium]

@jeromyrutter How do you know that something can't come from nothing? Maybe it's possible. Maybe there's a God, or many deities. The data is pointing toward nothing, and God is even more speculative. It's hard to wrap our minds around nothing causing something (if that's even the case). Maybe something came after nothing but was uncaused by it.

[jeromyrutter]

how could we call ANYTHING real if it exists in a state other than what it is? "reality" must a have a solid meaning. I can imagine anything i want to, a god that is greater than your god. the word "greater" is an opinion, depending on what we both consider great. but this "incorporeal" reality, the one that only I can experience, is dependent on a past that no longer exists...in the form of memories...my own through my own biological filters. but its not objectively real. only accepted as such

[jeromyrutter]

and any idea that the universe rose WITH a deity immediately admits this deity cannot have been the cause of it, and is likely that it depends on the universe (much like we do. isn't it strange how we use ourselves as the basis of comparison when trying to comprehend some almighty, omnipresent, eternal deity?) a universe surrounded by nothing is, by definition, infinite. what could cause a crunch that would cause another bang, especially if this is all a self-perpetuated universe?

[djwishwon]

@jeromyrutter You should have been in the debate, not the two atheists found here. Your response was better then all theirs. However, you have denied one fundamental aspect of Christianity. We believe in Substance Dualism. That is, there is a corporal and an incorporeal aspect to us. When John said, "God is Spirit" that means God is incorporeal but with the power to create matter and act on matter. We say that God doesn't need senses or grew up in our universe, He is transcendent.

[djwishwon]

You would then need to demonstrate that there is no incorporeal reality for your argument to stand.

[jeromyrutter]

@djwishwon you would need to prove your incorporeal reality exists for your argument to be taken seriously. don't confuse an objective reality with a subjective experience of it as material vs immaterial. the metaphysical nonsense begun by plato, continued by aristotle, and altered by aquinas needs to be dropped altogether. the object, light you perceive, and brain are all still material components...all interact together to give you an image, a holographic double.

[djwishwon]

@jeromyrutter I didn't make any argument but merely stated a premise. I have made no argument to takes seriously. An argument has at least 2 premises and 1 conclusion. I merely asserted one premise. If I did make an argument it was that if our incorporeal nature does exist, then your argument cannot be true by necessity. If philosophical naturalism is true, then your argument is true by necessity. It is you that needs to defend your argument.

[jeromyrutter]

@djwishwon ah. another william lane craig. watch his debate with sam harris at notre dame last year. what you admit to is the same thing he is doing in that debate. making statements instead of arguments, not wanting to support them. you're right. any statement without arguing premises is devoid of any real meaning. the natural position without your claim stands until you decide to support it, prove it, or otherwise. i have nothing to prove. you cannot prove a negative...

[jeromyrutter]

@djwishwon the negative depends on the positive statement. you wouldn't debate against the flying spaghetti monster until someone made a claim about its existence...no negative can exist about it until the claim is made.

[jeromyrutter]

@djwishwon there is no ESSENCE of anything, what exists does so necessarily as it is. it is the experience of it that confuses us. but a hydrogen atom exists as a hydrogen atom necessarily, it isn't formed of any previous substance. shaping a desk out of wood is not the same thing, because it is still an object of wood ALTERED by us. the thing is, all you need is to heat hydrogen, maybe friction, to create helium. the rest of the T.O.E. follows. evolution begins at hydrogen... to us.

[djwishwon]

@jeromyrutter Of course this argument has many logical leaps and bounds but due to space I can understand why. However, you can see that there is nothing here that is convincing. For example I don't know how you get from hydrogen to conciseness. Plus, where did the hydrogen come from? How did we get from nothing to something?

[jeromyrutter]

@djwishwon you ASSUME there was ever a time when nothingness existed. but even if there were a god, your claim would be that god made it all from nothingness (non-existence)....or from itself. i think the universe is infinite, eternal, but always changing. i also think that when we solve human consciousness, we will have solved the god problem-they are the same thing according to thermodynamics law of energy conservation, energy cannot be created, nor destroyed. it only changes form.

[jeromyrutter]

@jeromyrutter now. "nothing" exists. what is nothing? it is the lack of existence. so we would be saying "non-existence exists." you don't see a contradiction? if we give existence the value of 1 (something) or greater, and nothing the value of 0, what we are saying is 0=1 by saying nothing exists.this is absurd. 0 would only equal zero, and 1 would equal 1. either yes or no, not yes and no. did nothingness ever exist? nothing is not something, nor the opposite.

[Thoughtitorium]

@jeromyrutter Saying that "nothing exists" is the same as saying "it is the case that there is nothing." It's logically possible to affirm that "nothing exists." To be more technical, we couldn't affirm that nothing exists because we would have to exist to affirm it, which is contradictory. But, it's logical to say that at one point in time it was the case that nothing existed.

[jeromyrutter]

@djwishwon the greatest problem is you're still giving it a substance: spirit (which, btw, latin "spiritus", which originally meant BREATH.) what you seem to believe is that god is the equivalent of quantum mechanics: it resides in everything, is everywhere, and thus, is transcendent (like the thermodynamic law of energy conservation: energy is neither created nor destroyed)...the problem is that means that ONLY god exists in infinite forms.

[djwishwon]

@jeromyrutter no, that is not my position at all. I am not a pantheist. Not sure how you got that idea from what I said.

[jeromyrutter]

@djwishwon I would be god in the "image" (form) of jeromy, while you are god in the form of X. from where we stand, thought is a process that is still material dependent. such as the perception of light the brain transforms into an image, has a neurotransmitter...such as dopamine...activated that propels you to move or not, while memories are physically stored for later use.

[jeromyrutter]

intelligence and intuition are predicated on consciousness and experience. it is impossible to conceive of not only a consciousness but an intelligent one at that if there is only infinite (and up to this point, eternal) nothingness ("nothing is" or "is nothing" are both contradictions) to experience. "god" would be the equivalent of a non-corporal vegetable, an process of neural synapse carrying a signal with no content.

[jeromyrutter]

therefore, the instant of "creation" is meaningless to creation, but not to an observer. the problem is that the universe, even our own cognitive processes, IS material...neurons, an electrical charge, the brain lighting up as memories are accessed, even light has physical properties, or we couldn't see it. given that, until this point, nothingness exists, how can a consciousness exist if consciousness is a process predicated on material components, ie, eyes to see, memory (dna) to execute?

[jeromyrutter]

@djwishwon i have no idea. i'm not a quantum physicist. if you want my idea of what god is, what the video here on you tube Science Saved My Soul by philhellenes. he sums it up beautifully.....other than it being a human psychological archetype.

[jeromyrutter]

the way quintin explains general relativity, I can't help but think of Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise (only in reverse as the finish line might be the number 0), and then craig goes into something that reminds me of zeno's paradox of the arrow. the problem with "god", is that time still exists if there is a consciousness to observe even nothingness, it exists relative to "god" (relativity involves a consciousness to be doing the relating. planets do not "relate" to each other).

[MickeyMacaroney]

i wouldnt say that the consensus is that it depends on consciousness. very loosely there are 3 distinct theories: consciousness causes the collapse, the collapse occurs spontaneously without an observer, and that there is no real collapse and all possible states are actualized across many worlds. i wouldve liked craig to qualify his argument with respect to competing theories, but hes certainly not a lone nut for discussing it.

[maujo2009]

WLC has no knowledge whatsoever of Quantum Physics!

[MickeyMacaroney]

@maujo2009 ehh, ive seen worse from physicists too on wave collapse theory. hes right on the measurement problem, and youd be surprised how many physicists still suppose a need for consciousness to resolve wave function collapse. i always did think it sounded pretty silly tho

[maujo2009]

@MickeyMacaroney R U serious? I can't believe you! If you read a QP book you will NEVER find something like "...and then, consciousness collapses the wavefunction." WTF? Maybe a QP book written by philosophers but NEVER one written by physicists.

[MickeyMacaroney]

@maujo2009 of course youre not gonna find an in depth discussion of the possible philosophical interpretations of wave collapse in a textbook, the focus rightly should be on the math and physics. but are you gonna deny that people like von neumann and wigner are prominent physicists? they both hold consciousness as playing a key role in collapse

[maujo2009]

@MickeyMacaroney Thx for the info

[ClamCrunchy]

@maujo2009 Micky is correct, many of the founders of QM believed that consciousness caused wave function collapse. As of right now, the nature of wave function collapse is unresolved, and nobody really knows how it happens. But it does seem that the properties of particles do depend very critically on conscious observation.

[maujo2009]

@ClamCrunchy Thx for the info. I'll dig more into it.

[dhfjal]

Plantinga is now 80 and his wit is still unrivalled

[philosophizer149]

As a person interested in philosophy I have to say that Quentin Smith is a beast of a philosopher, his arguments are very inventive and creative, and he is the only philosopher who I have seen combat William Lane Craig and win.

[tylerjamessharp88]

The moderator is a fumbling fool. 

[98nafets]

Craig has mentioned both Smith and Plantinga many times in his debates and this is the first time I have heard either Smith or Plantinga debate.

My impression: Plantinga = great, Smith = can't speak at all

[Alexdurrant7]

@98nafets Hold on a second. Being a great speaker is completely distinct from being a great thinker. I would rephrase your comment as "Plantinga = great speaker & great thinker" and "Smith = great thinker."

[brettcav]

Dr Craig annihilated Dr Smith's arguement against the need for a First Cause. Dr Craig could have also drove the point home by having the audience stand up. If you used Dr Smith's thinking...the audience was never seated. There is a "point zero" in the Big Bang (Singularity)...just like there is a time in which the audience was seated.

[scottdwheeler]

I liked it...but would have liked it more with a decent moderator. He needs to cease all moderatory activities.

[hobaleo]

i like how quentin smith laughs after he finishes his presentation... he is so weird, maybe he is autistic..

[Craigmin]

@hobaleo "...and therefore God does not exist. *chuckle*" -Q. Smith

He laughed, I think, as he realized the brazenness of what he was saying, lol.

[SkyRifter]

1:44:35 -LOLS* They don't need Jesus; they're just fine races Type 4 or 5 or 7 civilizations.

That really really makes you humans look bad in itself*

so helpless they need a savior for their own problems to lazy to fix.

[hobaleo]

the fat dude wants to be taken seriously too, but why should anyone care about his gems of wisdom when we have 4 professors of philosophy there?

[hobaleo]

quentin smith and alvin plantinga are such nerds lol

[leojasuos]

nice debate, with respectful behaviour, addressing to arguments and civilized conversation. unlikely debates where pseudo intelectual new atheists are involved

[ndrthrdr1]

The more intelligent and better educated a person is, the less likely he/she is to believe in god(s).

[lorenzschuerch]

Dawkins and Hitchens both look like little children compared to these four guys. Good debate, good responses. Thanks for posting.

[xmoopzx]

You know you stuffed up when the dude who's supposed to be on your side rejects your argument lol

[RenegadeMaster07]

@xmoopzx that shows that this was an honest discussion, which is refreshing to see :) all debates should be like that

[HaecceitasQuidditas]

Quentin Smith's argument for the nonexistence of God on the basis of physical minds has to be a serious candidate for the title of the worst atheistic argument presented by a competent philosopher.

[thunderbolt94]

Very good debate. I felt that both sides were fairly represented, and represented well.

[Law19157]

lol! was the guy that used the white board trying to prove God doesn't exist with a theory that's not even a fact?

[lorenzschuerch]

@Law19157 He's just being an honest scientist. Science only has theories, even laws are not "facts" science is inductive not deductive. I'm a theist but I'm also a scientist and if you are going to attack the scientific side of the argument you need to understand fundamental principles about the scientific method such as that science never "proves" anything.

[Law19157]

@lorenzschuerch was I attacking the scientific side? I was making a comment on his view, the only thing he's being honest about is his disbelief. You support his time cause theory or whatever he calls it?

[Law19157]

@lorenzschuerch Also, you talk as if Atheism has some sort of monopoly on science, there are only 2 scientist on the panel 3 of you count the moderator all of them Atheists...you agree with the arguments of those 2 scientist?

[shernajwine]

Ok, I'm really not trying to be mean, but Quentin's first segment gave me a headache. Maybe I'm just dumb but he was really hard for me to follow!

[Law19157]

lol! what kind of camera was used to shoot this video....looks like it was shot in the 70's

[imkluu]

Thanks for the upload.

I also like the debates with the give and take and ability to hear both sides.

[stevelovesgod]

This was very interesting indeed! I like these types of debate... Not all one sided! Great!